Kaarina Kaikkonen

Kaarina Kaikkonen, Hanging On to Each Other, 2010

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‘Countless works and installations I have built, creating spaces within spaces. Through my work I try to understand myself more clearly – to understand where the internal ends and the external begins.' - Kaarina Kaikkonen

Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen (b.1952, Helsinki) creates site-specific installations in both interior and exterior spaces using old pieces of clothing or shoes collected from local donors. The garments carry personal memories of the owner, and with them she makes large-scale architectural forms or sculptures. While the materials she uses represent a common experience of domestic life, they also often allude to the artist’s own parents, as she uses her deceased father’s jackets as well as her mother’s shoes.

For Hanging on to Each Other (2010), The artist wanted to bring something as simple and human as ‘doing the laundry’ to a high technology foundation as a way to connect with local people from the city who donated the second-hand clothing for the installation. The maternal act of doing laundry can be understood as a basic symbol of healing, care and unconditional love – the tender care a mother devotes to washing dirty clothes for her family.

Kaarina Kaikkonen at Liverpool Biennial 2010

Hanging On to Each Other, 2010
Collected used clothing 
Curated in partnership with Asher Remy-Toledo and No Longer Empty
Exhibited at FACT